Easels have been used since ancient times for the purpose of supporting planar items, such as, posters, artwork, and the like. They may be used to hold up a painter's canvas or sketchbook while the artist is working on it or to display a completed painting for exhibition. The simplest form of an artist's easel consists of three vertical support members joined at one end. A pivoting mechanism allows the centermost support member to pivot away from the other two, forming a tripod. The two non-pivoting support members have a horizontal cross-member on which the planar item is placed.
Easels can be divided into two general categories; large, full-size easels designed for permanent studio use, and folding, lightweight easels for travel. Permanent easels have been primarily designed as stationary display furniture and are capable of exhibiting large and/or smaller pieces of finished art. Whereas, portable easels often include telescopic or folding legs that collapse for ease of transport and storage. While portable, folding easels work well for holding lighter items (smaller canvasses), they are not always stable enough for larger and/or heavier items.
For example, the three supports of the tripod-type portable easel must be interconnected by a plurality of horizontal bracing members (crossbars) at an intermediate point to prevent the support members from spreading apart and collapsing when a large/heavy item is placed thereon. The addition of these horizontal members often results in an easel assembly that is complex (composed of multiple parts) and therefore, expensive to manufacture, and difficult to assemble. Moreover, most lightweight, portable easels can easily become top-heavy and tip over when larger items are placed thereon.
As a consequence of these aforementioned problems, it is an object of the present invention to provide a portable easel assembly of a simple and elegant design comprising few individual parts while providing superior stability with no cross-bracing required. In addition, the easel of the present invention is capable of being easily transported and stored when in its collapsed state.